clbarclay

I would use aluminium pop rivets. No steel on aluminium for galvanic corrosion (there's enough on land rovers without encouraging any more). You can get them with bodies long enough to hold an inch or more material and with closed ends so the joint should be water tight. Also available with countersunk heads if you want a flush finish. They take just seconds to remove with a drill if you do need to remove the checker plate occasionally.

Its tough, but it certainly can pear off in sheets and when caught between a rock and a hard place (in this case the chassis) it's not appreciably better than any other paint and still comes off second best. Also if its likely to peal when damaged, then I expect it will also allow rust to spread underneath it. It was very nice to apply, spreading as a good even layer very easily and the little posts go a long way. Only needed 590 ml to do a range rover chassis nicely. After about the forth pot though the brush was well past its best. I doubt I would use it again on anything likely to regularly take hard knocks, might just as well use something cheaper that won't peal and keep touching it up.

Having used one a pole with inbuilt spring, they are very nice for towing, but all the cheap ones I've seen are underrated for land rovers and a friends one just buckled under breaking and subsequent acceleration finally ripped it apart. I have one of the cheap tow ropes with a hook on them (sort you get from halfords etc) which is handy for emergencies such as towing a conked out car from the middle of a cross roads or for towing cars about the yard at home (much more forgiving than a length of chain), but I would use something more substantial for towing longer distances on public highway, after all you never know when you will next need to tow something a bit bigger like a land rover. Having a hook on the tow rope is nice as you don't have to go hunting for a shackle and given that shackles aren't meant be done up tight, I would trust shackles for long distance towing either.

We got on of the cheap trolley jack at home the other year, can't remember which brand, but the valve on it wasn't nice for lowering. We just drilled a hole though the handle and stuck a short length of bar though so that its not easier to control. Personally I don't like the twist handle types, but you have to pay a lot more for the trolley jacks with ridged handles and locking/lowering triggers.

We have recently got an LWB 80 series land cruiser at home to replace rusted beyond economic redemption range rovers and its great for towing 3500 Kg trailers, which is partly due to the extra weight. One down side of this though is a typically lower MPG. If you only ever towing less than 2000 Kg then the 80 series sounds a little excessive, but then a 26 ft caravan can be like a ruddy big sail in a cross wind so a heavy towing vehicle could be beneficial.

If you don't want to do much fabrication then winch trays similar to Bobtailbogey's pictured above are not uncommon on ebay. If you do mount a winch between the chassis rails then as well as winch width you will also need to check fair lead offset. Some winches like the Superwinch EP9 require the fair lead in the middle, where as others would require an offset fair lead to fit between the chassis rails e.g. Superwinch Husky or Warn 9.5XP Personally I wouldn't stick a winch in front of a standard bumper, I find my approach angle is just enough as it is and I don't fancy the hassel of a demountable front a winch that needs fitting every time I winch. The last time I used it somebody would have gotten very wet fitting it. Another point about behind bumper winch mounts, Bobtailbogey's winch sits a bit lower than mine, if the bumper was raised to match the body lift and an hawse fair lead was used then I suspect that it may be able to fit without having to do any cutting of the bumper. Alternatively someone else has posted pics on here of their winch mount, where the winch was mounted a bit higher and the centre section of the bumper unclipped to reveal a hawse fair lead. With the centre section in place you had to look very closely to tell there was a winch fitted.

I have no experiance of a D3, but they hand brake could be a sprung on type, where the hand brake is normally engadged and is electircally disengaged. A veriation on this would be to have some kind of over centre device, where the electics switch the spring between engaging and disengaging so that if there is a fault while driving along the hand brake ddoesn't suddenly come on.

http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/showthread.php?t=779606

What bushes are fitted to your radius arms? The radius arms by their nature act like and anti roll bar, resisting articulation. I was amazed at the difference between between the cheap polyurethane bushes I had fitted and the metalastic bushes now fitted to my range rover. Before it couldn't reach the limits of standard dampers, now it makes good use of 11" travel dampers. That was with the same springs and before fitting the extra weight of a winch.

This is the best pic I've currently got of the rear bumper online. This was made from scrap as a quick job to boost my moral during sill repairs. This is held on by using the 2 bolts thet held the towbar drop plate, to clamp a pair of plates above and below the chassis. These plates bolted to the chassis supporeted the tube while I was tack welding it together with a G clamps clamping the tube to the origional bumper brakets on the chassis to stop it falling of the plates. The tube was very thick wall so I just drilled and tapped it to take another pair of bolts using the origional bumper brakets on the chassis. The recovery point is a single clevis in the middle. Strength wise, the 2 vertical bolts though the chassis handle the recovery forces well and the bolts at the edge of the chassis stop is twisting the chassis when jacking it up on one side with a hilift. The bumper its self is far stronger than it needs to be and could be made lighter, the clevis sticks out a bit too far as well. Ideally this should be recessed like the clevis in in wolf defender front bumpers to clean up the departure angle and stop it plowing. The bumper is certainly stronger than the front of a range rover

A common cause of the gears in the middle of diffs disintegrating is excessive wheel spin. This can draw the oil away from between the gears and the shaft they rotate on, causing them to seize and eventually break up.

150*100*5 sounds pretty big. I've no idea what the angles of the chassis brackets are, though it would be easy enough to measure with just an ordinary protractor and a plumb line. IIRC the only bits I accurately measured when making mine was the holes for the bolts thought the chassis cross member. The rest was guestimated or a case of attaching the brackets to the chassis and supporting the new bumper next to them and then tack welding together.

You are not the only one. From a fatigue failure point of view they don't look good, but they were designed for low millage hard knocks which would destroy other wheels, rather than with stranding millions of stress fluctuations from high millage.

Broadly speaking with all structural bolted joints, the bolt should clamp the part together creating friction between the components. It is this firction that prevents the parts sliding against each other. The parts should not push aginst the shank of the bolt, if they are free to slide against the bolt then this can cause rapid wear of the parts and the bolt. Tightening bolted joints to the required torque is esential to prevent damage. If you remove a bolt out of a suspension bush and find wear on it then something is a miss. When assembling vehicles, even the self tapping screws holding the dash together will have a specified torque to be done up to, though from a design point of view they may not be classed as structural.

There is enough travel in the self leveling unit (SLU) to allow +2" dampers to fully extend on articulation, but only just with standard springs. these units do wear out so removing it probably won't have any ill effects though fitting discovery rear springs will probaly help as they never had a SLU and just had stiff springs instead.